NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: SOUTH BEACH

By JIM O'GRADY

Published: July 7, 2002

Sal and Erika Monte, a couple in their 50's, didn't look like lawbreakers. They wore sunblock and sensible hats and rode a tandem bike at a leisurely pace along the 1.5-mile length of the South Beach boardwalk. But they knew what they were doing on that outing last Sunday. They were defying a law against bicycles on the boardwalk that the City Parks Department had been enforcing starting June 24.

''Bicycling here is one of the joys of my life,'' Ms. Monte said. ''I feel like they're trying to take my freedom away.''

In mid-June, the Parks Department posted 20 ''No Bicycling'' signs on the boardwalk, which runs by a brown sand beach fronting Raritan Bay. Resistance surfaced quickly. Several nights later, most of the signs had been removed.

When rangers stop bicyclists, they order them off the boardwalk and down to a concrete path next to the beach parking lot. The path winds through that lot, a cracked asphalt sidewalk and the six-lane Father Capodanno Boulevard, and runs next to a softball field dugout.

''I hate the bike path,'' Ms. Monte said. ''Cars cut you off all the time.''

But Thomas A. Paulo, the Staten Island borough commissioner of parks, says elderly pedestrians are complaining more and more that cyclists have been cutting them off.

''People on bikes are kind of all over the boardwalk,'' he said, ''and they come up behind the older people.'' He said he told the rangers to warn bicyclists of the boardwalk ban.

Last weekend, however, park rangers looked the other way as dozens of bicyclists sought the breeze up on the boardwalk. The letup prompted Mary Jane Cooper, an elderly resident of Grasmere, to say she wished the ban would be enforced. Then she suggested a compromise that some bicyclists had brought up: ''Why not give them a certain time?''

But another type of compromise may be coming. Ed Burke, a spokesman for the Staten Island borough president, James P. Molinaro, said Mr. Molinaro favored drawing a 12-foot-wide bicycle lane on the inland side of the 40-foot boardwalk. ''That way, pedestrians who feel threatened by the bikes can keep away from it,'' he said. Mr. Paulo also likes this idea.

Meanwhile, the civil disobedience continues. ''Every day I break the law,'' said Terry Collins, who was riding on the boardwalk the same day as Erika Monte. ''It's an unjust law so it needs breaking.'' JIM O'GRADY

Photo: Walkers may approve of the bicycle ban on the South Beach boardwalk, but cyclists are pushing a compromise: a 12-foot bicycle lane. (Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times)